


say you'll always keep me

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Series: midori sours [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Genderswap, LUUUUUURVE, Music, Phone Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Summer break, ot5 vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:18:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2223714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn watches her like he can see right into her brain. “Niall,” he says finally. “You’re in love with him.” </p><p>The words twist at her heart, like they’ve reached inside her, like they’re pulling strings. “Yeah, maybe,” she murmurs. She’s not ready to have this conversation, not when she’s barely 24 hours out of Louis’ company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	say you'll always keep me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dangerbears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangerbears/gifts).



> OH MIDORI, it's been a wild ride. i apologize if this seems abbreviated at all; it's just that i really could write this 'verse without end, and it's been almost a year since i posted the first part of it and i need to move on with my life!! so, it's kind of open-ended, but i hope happily so. 
> 
> between part two and now, btw, there was an amazingly lovely [picspam](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com/post/71836186687/tomlinsoned-favourite-fics-midori-sours-by) made for this series, and i wrote a cut scene about sorority formal, which you can read [here](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com/post/67197511934/aight-aight-so-greta-i-know-ur-bday-isnt-til). 
> 
> anyway, thank you to everyone who's read this lil series, i love you. and lucy, who gave me this prompt in the first place, and greta, who made me keep writing it for months after, i love you extra more.
> 
> artistic liberties have been taken with the bungalow and, like, england.

Niall's expecting her mum at Heathrow, but it's Harry she finds waiting at arrivals, his hair tied back with what looks like a dish rag and a big dopey grin on his big dopey face. She squeaks in surprise when she spots him, dropping her bags and setting down her guitar case and breaking into a run. The impact of her against his chest sends him rocking back on her feet, and he wraps his arms around her and squeezes her up off the floor.

"Hey, Nialler," he rumbles, low and warm into her hair. "Miss me?"

"Who are you and what've you done with Maura?" she asks. She stands on his feet when he sets her down, on tip-toe in her flip-flops, looking up at him.

He does his sideways smile. "I paid her to let me pick you up," he says. "Well, offered, anyway, but she wouldn't take the money. We'll have to go out to dinner or something. I owe her, you know. For the privilege of, like, seeing you first."

"Yeah, right," Niall says. She steps back, hands on Harry's shoulders. "Let's have a look at you, then. Did you get taller? Have you been eating alright? Getting all your vitamins?"

"Nah, I'm pretty sure I'm shrinking," he says. "You're looking fit, though. Got that proper American glow." 

She flips her hair and flutters her eyelashes and goes to collect her stuff. 

"Where're we going, then?"

“Dunno.” He takes one of her bags out of her hands and they set off toward the exit. “It's your summer hols, man, you can do whatever you want!"

She sighs happily as the doors open and that first burst of lukewarm London smog hits her in the face. "It's so fucking good to be back," she says. "I'm too far, innit.” 

His beat-up old hatchback is parked in the bus lane with its hazards on. Niall gives a winning smile to the watching, weary-looking traffic cop as they load her things into the boot. 

"Sooo," Harry says once they're strapped in and the car is sputtering into life. "Where's your boooooy, then?"

She flushes a little, even though it's been months with Louis, and there's really no need to flush anymore. "His exams went later than mine, he's still at school. Back next week." 

"Can we have a party or something? He can bring his friend, and I can bring my friend -- name's Zayn, you haven't met him yet, I don't think --"

"Oh, shut up. Where’s he at anyway? Miss him.” 

“Working,” Harry says. Zayn works at a café a block from his mum’s house – makes lattes by day and does the coffeehouse guitar thing for tips at the weekend. “Don’t change the subject.” 

“Yes, Harry, we can have a party,” she says, grinning. “When’s the bungalow free?”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry says. “I forgot about that place.”

“Haz, we go every summer.” 

“I know. But I forgot. My summer’s only just started, now you’re here, hasn’t it?”

She smiles, imagining, dreamily, the five of them together in the little house by the lake – the idea of Louis and Liam meeting Zayn and Harry and them all being mates together, and the idea of Louis, here, at home – a real thing that exists in real life, not just figment of her deluded uni imagination.

She puts her feet up on the dash of Harry’s car, grinning. “Bungalow it is, then,” she says. 

Harry smirks at her. “It’s a date.” He shakes his head a little as she keeps on grinning out the window, chuckling to himself, and turns on the radio.

*

Niall’s jetlagged all to hell after she finishes catching up with her mum and looking at printed-out photos of Theo she’s already seen on Facebook and eating dinner, so she makes Harry and Zayn come over and they camp out in the basement like they used to and jam. Harry’s acquired a programmable drum pad sometime during her absence, and he brings his electric and Zayn brings his bass. They sit in a circle and smoke a bit of pot and just play, not talking much, the boys sleepy and their presence comforting Niall into silence. They’ve learned all these new songs without her and they keep having to stop to tell her the chords. 

“Have you been playing a lot this year?” she asks. “Performing and stuff?”

“Sort of, yeah,” Zayn says. “We’ve got some regular gigs at a couple of bars, like, our normal Tuesday down at the Standard and shit. Like last summer.”

“It’s been good,” Harry says. “Since we’re not doing anything else.”

“Making lattes.” Zayn smiles a little, and it makes Harry laugh.

“Yeah,” he says, raising his hand, “and croissants, for me.” Harry still works at the bakery where he’s been forever. Niall sometimes thinks Harry was born and will die in that bakery and be perfectly happy so long as he gets to keep making music on the side. 

“That’s okay,” she tells them. Her brain’s not working well enough at the moment to tease. “You sound really good, I mean, I can tell you’ve had loads more practice this year. Got a proper set going.”

“Yeah.” Zayn shrugs. “It’s nice. Keeping busy with music. It’s, like, what we always wanted to do, you know.”

“Do you get to play a lot, Nialler?” Harry asks. 

Zayn picks up his old blue glass pipe, half-smoked, and lights it again. 

“At sorority shit, sometimes.” Niall laughs. “And I jam a bit with Louis and Liam. I mean, they sing. And Liam can play a bit of guitar, but he doesn’t have his own.” They’re looking at her in this detached, stoned way, like they earnestly want to understand what and who she’s talking about but know they won’t be able to. “Dunno,” she says, self-conscious now. “It’s enough.” 

“Yeah, bro, glad you’ve got that going on,” Zayn says. Niall smiles down at her guitar in her lap. Zayn’s so easy. She’s so glad to be home. 

“It’s funny to watch you talk about him.” Harry gives Niall a crooked grin as she takes the pipe and the lighter Zayn’s offering her.

“Who, Liam?”

“No,” Harry scoffs. 

Niall knows he meant Louis, but she doesn’t want to make this any easier for them than it needs to be. 

“But you get, like, this _look_ ,” Harry goes on. Niall takes her hit, feels the weed drag in her lungs and fade into her skin, settling her. She passes Harry the pipe and plucks absently at the strings of her guitar.

“I mean, I suppose – I guess he _is_ my _boyfriend_ now, if you like.” It makes her smile a tiny bit, but it still feels weird to say. It feels reductionist. 

“If _you_ like,” Zayn says, smirking. 

“We never really put a label on it?” She frowns. “But it’s, like, definitely a _thing_ now? Like, it wasn’t for sure, for a while.” A pause in which she thinks back on it, that weird semester of half-friendship, half-romance, of everything in between. “He’s my best friend over there,” she adds, not looking at either of them.

“So what’s that all mean, then?” Harry asks. His eyes when she looks up at him are round and bloodshot and solemn. 

“You know what you look like sometimes, Harry?” she asks instead of answering his question, which is making her feel a bit stressed. “One of them squirrel things. With the big eyeballs.” 

“Sugar baby.” Harry grins.

“Slow loris,” Zayn corrects. They all laugh. Harry finds a video of a slow loris on YouTube for them to watch, and the neglected amp buzzes on low volume in the corner. 

After the fact, Niall comes up with an answer that feels okay. “I guess what it is – with Louis, it just means that we’re, like, committed. You know. To each other.” 

Zayn turns slowly to consider her, frowning. 

“Is it serious, then?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. “He’s graduating next year, I mean. I don’t know anything.” 

She thinks of how often she sees him, how they hardly ever sleep apart. She thinks of how a week ago, when she was locked in her room and losing her mind revising for her Complex Systems final, he brought her a grilled cheese and a mug of her favorite dining hall juice combo from all the way across campus, unsolicited, then stayed in her bed reading his Psych textbook until she could put down her pencil and turn around in her chair and collapse into his arms. 

Zayn watches her think about all this like he can see right into her brain. “Niall,” he says finally, when she doesn’t elaborate. “You’re in love with him.” 

The words twist at her heart, like they’ve reached inside her, like they’re pulling strings.

She doesn’t meet Zayn’s eyes. “Yeah, maybe,” she murmurs. She’s not ready to have this conversation, not when she’s barely 24 hours out of Louis’ company. 

“ _May_ be,” Harry mimics, shaking his hair off his forehead and looking at Zayn, who shrugs. Niall strums out the bones of an Eagles hook on her guitar. 

“You guys,” she sighs. “Making me think about it and shit.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Harry sings. It makes her smile. 

“You don’t have to think so much, though, mate,” Zayn points out.

“I know,” she says. And the thing is, when she’s with Louis, he makes her feel so happy and safe that she doesn’t hardly think of any of it. It’s just with an ocean between them that it’s all welling up. 

“But Niall,” Harry says. “You could just, like, tell him, if it’s how you’re feeling. It’s a good thing to know. Being in love. It’s nice.” 

She smiles a little. “So wise, Haz.” Harry’s ridiculous, but the words are sticking in her head – his advice always does, somehow. But she doesn’t know what else to say. She pokes at the drum pad until it kicks back into life and they don’t have to talk about anything for a while. 

*

Being back with the boys gives her a kind of added clarity about Louis that Niall hadn’t realized she was lacking, though, as she lies awake late into that first night, feeling the time difference and the tail end of a good high and rolling around in her too-empty, unslept-in bed at her mum’s. 

She loves Harry and Zayn in such a different way than how she feels about Louis. They’re like brothers to her; they keep her grounded. They know her history and she knows theirs and they’ve been friends through too many years of other loves and changes and disasters for anything to ever go weird between them.

Louis untethers her in a way Harry and Zayn never do. With him, she feels like she’s floating, like together they’re the biggest, most important thing she’s ever been a part of. 

She misses having him in bed with her. It’s frustrating to be apart, and scary to think she hasn’t reached the summit of this: that night on the football pitch when he’d kissed her hard and asked her to formal, and everything he’s ever said to her, how it’s climbed up and up and up and hasn’t stopped. At every point along the way she’s thought it might be the most intense it’ll ever be, and she’s felt like that could be enough for her, like it would have to be. 

But it hasn’t stopped. Niall doesn’t know why that frightens her so much – knowing she loves him. Admitting she’s _in_ love. Even though he’s graduating, even though she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. It should be such a good thing. It is.

Because it’s late and she’s jetlagged and still a little stoned, she turns into her pillow and lets the tears come, just for a second, breathing in and wishing her sheets here smelled of Louis like at school. She wants him here, now, not in a week, not only for a few months. She just wants him with her all the time.

*

They FaceTime after his last exam, late at night her time, three days before he gets back to London. She’s so happy to see him that she’s having trouble keeping the phone steady. 

“Niall. Babe, you’re just a blur, calm down,” he says, his voice cracking across the WiFi. 

“Hi,” she says. “I miss you. How was your test?”

“Fine,” he says. “Maybe bad, I don’t know. I never know. I don’t care, it’s done now and it’s fucking summer and I am _done_. How are you? I miss you too,” he adds. “A lot. I miss you a lot.”

“I miss you a lot,” she repeats mindlessly, and he smiles. “I’m alright. Caught up on sleep and mum’s cooking and all that good stuff.”

“Lemme see your room.” 

She gives him a 360, narrating: “There’s the window – bed’s over here – that’s all the music stuff there in the corner, but it’s a mess right now, we’ve been hauling it around.” 

“Nice,” he says. “You need to get some roadies, don’t you?”

“That’s what I’ll have you and Payno for.” She turns the phone back so she can see him again. He looks tired and happy and he’s looking _at_ her, into the camera, not off into the corner like people usually do. 

“Excellent,” he says. “Been playing a lot, then?”

“Had our old Tuesday gig last night,” she says proudly. “They’ve gone and learned all this new shit without me. Fuckers. But I’m back to it. Normal summer life.” 

“I can’t fucking wait,” he says. “We need a weekly thing, too, don’t we? Footie night at the park or something like that.”

“What park?” She laughs. “We’re not gonna be walking distance from each other anymore, you know.”

“Please. We’ll make it work. There’s a park out there for us somewhere.”

“Okay,” she says. She has this urge to make him promise, but she holds her tongue.

There’s a moment of lag, and then he says, “Promise we’ll hang out, like, at least a couple of times a week,” and it makes her lip tremble. 

“I promise,” she says. “You can crash here anytime.”

“You too,” he says. “You can come babysit my sisters and we can go out and find you and the lads a regular gig over my way.”

She grins and nods, fervent, because she’s got a lump in her throat and doesn’t trust herself to speak.

“You okay, love?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I can’t wait to see you.”

“I know,” he says. He smiles at her, just a little smile, the kind she knows is serious, and the silence stretches and stretches.

“What are you doing later?” she asks. 

“Dinner with Liam and Sophia, then might go out with some of the rest of the squad, if I can rouse ‘em from studying. Liam’s still got about a hundred exams, I don’t understand it at all. It’s _physio_.” In the background, she hears the buzzer of his apartment door go off. “Expect that’s Sophia now,” he says. “Oh, and Liam. He’s lost his key. I mean, we did. Got a bit rowdy, night before last, threw it in the lake. You know how it is.” She laughs.

“D’you have to go, then?” 

He frowns somewhere off in space, maybe in the direction of the door. He’s holding the phone so his face takes up the whole screen. The buzzer sounds again. “Kind of.”

“Alright. Tell them I say hi.”

“I will do.” 

Another stretch of silence. _I love you_ , she thinks, and it terrifies her.

“You hang up first,” he says. She laughs. He grins, and blows her a kiss.

“Okay, Lou. Talk soon.”

“Bye!” He draws it out, and they’re both laughing as she signs off. She keeps laughing, head in hands, for a while longer afterward. 

*

She’s in bed in the dark later, scrolling sleeplessly through Facebook on her phone, when he texts her.

_You awake?_

She smiles. 

_good morning !_ , she sends back. _jetlags a bitch over here_

His reply comes in 30 seconds. _Can’t sleep thinking about you._

It makes her heart trip a little. She sends a sad emoji, then, _my bed at homes too big without you_. She feels a bit ridiculous, but Louis brings that out in her. 

_Want you here in mine_ , he sends, then, _So I could touch you._

Her toes curl. She’s assuming he’s drunk, though Louis is such a weirdly particular texter that it’s never easy to tell. 

Before she can reply, he texts, _Can I call ?_ , which sends a lick of heat through her stomach. She calls him instead and puts it on quiet speakerphone beside her face, turned on her side. 

“Hi, Niall,” he says, voice raspy and soft when he answers. 

“Hi,” she murmurs. Her mum’s asleep down the hall, but it’s so late and there’s enough closed doors and space between them that she probably won’t wake without real noise.

Louis just breathes for a moment. Niall slips her toes along her instep beneath the blankets. “What are you doing?” she asks. 

“I’m – bit drunk.” There’s a hoarse catch in his quiet voice that Niall recognizes with a thrill just as he gives a quiet moan. 

“Are you—?”

He cuts her off with a choked little gasp, and she turns the volume on her phone down lower, every part of her lit up.

“Louis,” she breathes.

“Talk to me,” he says, “fuck. Can you touch yourself for me, Niall?”

“Oh my god.” She sinks her teeth into her lower lip and shifts beneath the duvet, spreading her legs and ghosting a hand between them, pressing at her clit through her underwear. “You started without me,” she whispers. 

“I know. Are you –” he gives a little shudder-sound that makes her gasp. “Are you doing it?”

“Yeah.” She gives up rubbing at herself through the fabric almost immediately and slips her fingers past the lace elastic waist of her panties. She’s wet already, and she tucks two fingers against her clit, starts to move them, breathing out a little noise. “Yeah, Lou,” she murmurs, turning her face toward the phone’s dim glow on her mattress. Her open mouth catches on the fitted sheet, lower lip dragging, and she thinks of him kissing her, touching her, listens to the thin treble sounds of his almost-moans over their transatlantic connection. 

“What are you thinking about,” he breathes. She can hear the rustling of his sheets.

“You, just,” she breathes back, working her clit at a slow rhythm with the guitar-calloused pad of her middle finger. She draws her other hand up beneath the vest of Louis’ she’s been sleeping in, beneath her breasts, over the outward curve of her ribs when she arches up a little. “Thinking how you’d feel, you… touching me.”

“Yeah,” he says, all raspy. “I’d eat you out. Miss the way you taste. Fuck – I fucking love it, Niall.”

“Louis,” she gasps, closing her eyes. She hitches her hips back and slips her other hand between her legs, slicks up two fingers, pushes them into herself. A weak little moan hums out shaky against the roof of her mouth. She wishes her fingers were his tongue, suckling at her clit, fucking into her. Her sheets are too smooth against her thighs, and she remembers his stubble on the video call earlier, knows how it’d feel. 

The dark of the room is pressing in on Niall’s open eyes. She squeezes them shut and mumbles, “What – what’re you wearing?” which makes him laugh, breathless.

“Nothing,” he says. She pictures the angles of him, the V of his hips and his tattoos all over, pictures him stretched out golden on his mattress with his hard cock fucking into in his hand, and quickens the pace of her fingers. She could ride him like that, hold his wrists down and bounce on his dick. The thought sends a helpless wave of heat through her and she knows she isn’t going to last long. It’s not like it’s been ages since she rubbed one out, far from it, but it wasn’t like this.

“What are _you_ wearing, then?” Louis asks with what sounds like an effort.

“Just your vest,” she says, “that black one I stole from you.” She has to stop to catch her breath for a moment, still circling her finger over her clit.

“Oh, god,” Louis gets out. She hears some rustling, then, like he’s adjusting his grip on himself, and she spreads her legs further, curling her toes against the bed, her whole body burning. He breathes out, a low rush into the phone.

“I’d bite your nipples like you like,” he says suddenly. 

“ _Fuck._ ” Her voice comes out a whimper. It always makes her sob when he does that, makes her writhe under him, grab his hair and hold him to her. She fucks herself deeper on her fingers, biting her lip hard to keep quiet. A whine makes it out of her mouth, and he moans. 

“God, that’s it,” he breathes. “Are you – are you fucking yourself? With your fingers, love?”

“Yeah.” She taps her fingertips deep in herself, quivering hard, her stomach caving. She’s so turned on she can’t think straight. 

“Wish I could,” he gasps, “so gorgeous, Niall, perfect for me.” 

“Christ, Louis.” He sounds like he’s close. “Wait, babe, don’t come, just –” she licks at her own trembling mouth. “Just listen to me, fuck.” 

He groans. “Niall.”

“Not yet,” she whispers, rocking her hips down against the fingers she has in herself. Her eyes flutter closed. “Fuck, oh, fuck me, Louis.” 

“Let me hear you, babe.” His voice comes out strained, right on the edge, and it sends her over it, gasping, clenching around her own fingers, her body on fire for one long moment. 

Louis is moaning when she comes back to herself, amid the white noise in her ears. She can tell he starts to come from the way the sounds he’s making stutter and then the drag out, one high, helpless thread of a moan. She loves that sound, loves taking him apart. 

She drags a finger through the heavy slick of herself, oversensitive. The muscles in her thighs are aching. 

There’s a jostle on the other end of the line and finally he’s just panting, everything slowing down. 

“Fuck,” he says, “what you do to me.”

“Louis,” she breathes, and then she laughs a little. “That was.” She hums, turning on her back and pretending he’s beside her. “Almost better than the real thing, eh?”

“Shut up,” he mumbles, muffled like he’s shoved the phone under the pillow or something. He’d have thumped her with that pillow if he was here.

“Home soon,” she breathes.

“Yeah.” 

Silence for a while, both of them breathing. It happens again, like it does whenever there’s space: _I’m in love with you_ , she thinks, _Louis, I love you so much_. She closes her eyes.

“What are you thinking?” she asks. 

“Just miss you,” he sighs. “Fuck, I’m drunk. I should sleep.”

“Right.”

“Right.” Rustling on the other end of the line, and she can hear his low, sly smile when he speaks again. “I’ll see you soon, Irish.”

“Yeah. G’night, Lou.” 

The call ends. Niall lies awake for a while longer in her too-quiet room, blinking heavy at the ceiling, willing this not to feel so fucking hard. 

*

He’s back that Saturday and she drives her mum’s car up to Doncaster on Sunday. It’s uncommonly sunny and warm for May and she’s got her Aviators on and the sunroof open, Miley on the stereo. She feels unstoppable, like she’s glowing with it – the prospect of seeing Louis, the knowledge that even here she gets to have him. 

He’s playing with a couple of his sisters in the front garden when she pulls up, cuts the motor and stands to stick her torso out the sunroof. 

“Oi, stranger,” she calls. His head snaps up, and he grins big. 

“Can’t park there,” he calls back. “My girlfriend’s coming, it’s reserved.” 

She just grins helplessly. As ever, there are moments where she’s so enamored of him she can’t even keep up a joke. 

She gets out of the car and is in his arms at the front gate before she can blink. He smells a little different, probably like his house here does, and she noses into the crook of his neck, closing her eyes. His arms are tight around her back, the whole curve of his body fitting to hers, and he breathes into her hair, which is loose and windblown down her back.

“Hiya, Niall,” he murmurs as he pulls back. She smiles, the tips of their noses brushing, and then she kisses him, tasting the sweat and stubble on his upper lip. It feels like it’s been fucking ages. 

“Hi,” she says into his mouth, fingers threading through his hair. “Welcome home.”

He hugs her again. “Thanks,” he says. “Let’s give you the tour.” 

She meets Phoebe and Daisy, who are adorably shy in their matching outfits. Lottie’s out with Louis’ mum and her fiancée doing a wedding thing, but Fizzy’s studying for a final exam at the dining room table with the baby monitor beside her. They peek in on the brand-new twins, asleep in their room.

“They came just – right before school ended. They’re _so_ little, aren’t they?”

Niall nods, curling her fingers over the side of Ernie’s blue-decorated crib. 

“It’s so weird to have a little brother now,” Louis murmurs. She looks at him. He seems far away; she wonders if he’s been thinking about this a lot, now it’s real. As they leave the room, she takes his hand, just for a second, grounding him. His fingers curl against her palm.

He gives her a can of Coke and walks her around his little house, showing her football trophies, family photos, gesturing expansively. He shows her his room, which fits barely more than his bed, and the back garden, a lopsided goal with a well-worn net standing stubbornly at one end. 

“So,” he says, “that it’s, then. Now you know everything.” 

He’s actually anxious, she realizes then, his thumbs hooked into his belt loops, rocking on his heels a little on the patio. 

“I love it,” she says. “Of course I do, it’s perfect. It’s you.” 

She steps into his space and tucks her thumbs alongside his, nestling her chin over his shoulder. 

“I like seeing you here,” she mutters. He shifts against her.

“It just feels so small?” he says like he’s asking for confirmation. “That’s the thing, really. Feel like I outgrow it a little more every time I go away. And – those _babies_ , man.” He laughs, a little shudder of a sound that gets right inside her, flushes into her bones. After a moment he extricates his hands from between them and slides them around her waist. 

“I like seeing you here too,” he murmurs into her hair, and it makes her sigh, fitful, turning her face into his neck because she can’t bear to let him see how it’s crumpled a little. She likes being here with him, loves it, so much. 

“Wanna have a kick-about?” she asks, because she can’t say anything else. He kisses her on the cheek as he steps back, brightening. If there’s one thing she knows about Louis, it’s that nothing distracts him like footie does.

She stays for dinner, charms his mum, and winds up in his room with the lights on and the intention of driving home sometime that evening. Jay was good-natured about leaving them alone together, to the point that it’s a bit awkward, or so Louis seems to think.

“She knows exactly what’s up all the time.” He’s laughing helplessly, head in hands. They’re sat feet apart on the edge of his bed. “Like, I’m not just the oldest, but being the only boy for so long – I can’t keep any fucking secrets from her, it’s awful.” 

“It’s alright.” Niall giggles a little. “I don’t care.” 

“But you’ve only just _met_ her and everything,” Louis whines. 

“Well, I don’t care if she doesn’t,” Niall amends. Louis sighs heavily. 

“C’mere, then,” he says with a weary smile – a jetlagged smile, one Niall recognizes from her preceding week. He opens his arms to her, and she stands and drops across his waist, straddling him and sliding her hands into his hair.

“Hey,” she murmurs, and he tips his chin up and kisses her, soft at first, then licking over her lower lip, their mouths opening for each other. He steals her breath like that, little seeking presses of the tip of his tongue against hers until she’s trembling in his lap, fingers in his hair. She can feel the press of his cock in his jeans beneath her thigh, half-hard. 

“Can we be quick?” she murmurs. 

“Expect so,” Louis says genially, moving to kiss beneath her jaw, and she gives a shaky laugh.

She winds up on her back beneath him, both their shirts still on and his childhood sheets kicked halfway down, caught around her ankles along with her underwear. He presses one of her legs back higher, huffing out a breath with his hair in his face as he moves in her. She slips her hands beneath his shirt, pulling him down and in, breathing in time. 

It frightens her a little when he doesn’t meet her eyes, but a thousand times more when he does: that infinite moment of infinite closeness, feeling him inside her, her gasping breath stalling in her throat as he stares down at her and neither of them blinks. Once when it happens he makes a strangled little noise and ducks down to kiss her hard, still pressing closer even though he’s got nowhere left to go. She tries to breathe steady against his temple, whispers, “C’mon, now, that’s it,” and he whimpers and then jerks against her, coming hard and sudden and making her dig her heels into his back.

He eats her out after, like he’d said he would on the phone, all loose-limbed and eager. “Don’t move,” he says as he disposes of the condom and slips down her body, between her spread legs. She gasps and grabs his hair when he puts his mouth to her. 

“Oh, shit,” she breathes. “Shit, Louis.” She’s already oversensitive and aching from being fucked, and he smoothes it all over with his hot tongue, licks circles around her clit for what feels like an eternity before sucking at it, just for a moment, and she arches down, stopping her breath in her throat to keep from crying out as she comes.

He keeps on licking her clean after, while she trembles beneath him and finally goes still. She has to whine his name to get him to stop. 

“Greedy boy,” she murmurs, gathering him up in her arms. They’re both a little sweaty in their shirts, Niall with her bra still on, hair all over the place. He kisses her and she tastes herself in his mouth. 

“A week’s too long,” he tells her, matter-of-factly, their noses brushing. “Let’s not do that again, shall we?”

She smiles against his lips. “Agreed.” 

The evening stretches into a close read of his primary school-era CD collection – mostly respectable pop-punk, but a deplorable lack of boy bands as compared to Niall’s – and an exploration of all the dusty trophies and outdated electronics and photostrips with early teenage girlfriends that litter the surfaces of the room. 

She makes him tell her as many stories as he can remember – about Hannah, about football, about growing up -- trying to piece together the puzzle that laid his foundations, the person he was before she knew him. She’s got a sense of who he used to be, but she wants to make the connection to _now_. She wants to know the whole thing. 

It turns out he’d thought of trying out for X-Factor the same year she’d been planning on it with Harry and Zayn, but none of them had gone and done it. “Imagine that,” he says, pulling one of his little self-deprecating smiles, “meeting you lot at boot camp instead of – all this.”

“Would’ve been weird,” she murmurs, poring over an old class photo. She bursts out laughing. “Jesus, Louis, your hair.”

He grabs it from her, grinning. “Fuck off.”

She pushes his fringe down over his forehead, trying to re-approximate the helmet hair of yore. “Oh, yeah. Good looks, Tommo.” 

He catches her fingers in his own. “So when am I going to meet your musicians, anyway? Speaking of.” 

“Whenever you want to. We talked about doing a weekend at the bungalow, actually – Harry’s stepdad’s place. It’s just this cute little lake house. Not too long a drive. We go all the time.”

“Yeah?” It catches his attention. “Sounds wicked.”

“Yeah. When d’you reckon? Are you working this summer?”

“Don’t know yet. Let’s go before I figure it out, eh?”

She grins. “Alright. I’ll talk to Hazza and let you know, then. And… do you want to come down and watch us play on Tuesday, maybe?”

“Yes,” he says. “Absolutely. Text me when and where.”

He walks her to her car in the early summer twilight, kisses her as she climbs into the driver’s seat, kisses her again once she’s turned on the engine and rolled down the window. 

“It’s weird, innit,” he says, mouth ducking. “Maybe I should come live in your basement. Don’t know if I like this.”

“Don’t know if my mum would like that, either, though,” she says. He laughs, but less than she’d have thought. “It’ll be okay, Lou,” she tells him, touching his hand awkwardly where it’s curled over the car doorframe, then winding their fingers together. “I’ll see you, like, Tuesday.” 

It’s so odd to be the one reassuring him, instead of the other way around. 

He leans down for another kiss, boops her on the nose as he pulls away. “Alright. Text me when you get home.”

“Will do.” She puts the car in gear. “Goodnight, Lou.”

“Goodnight, Niall,” he says, smiling his littlest, warmest smile, the one that’s just for her. He steps back and waves as she drives off. 

She’s halfway home when she works it out: that he’s in this just as much as she is. Can that possibly be true? And yet she can remember other points along the way where she’s had the same realization. Points where she’s thought he couldn’t possibly love her as much as she loves him, and then she’ll spot a little catch of something on his face – his eyes lingering, or the way he keeps smiling after he’s looked away from her. How he’d been nervous for her to see his house, meet his mum, just like she knows she’ll work herself up over the same shit when the time comes. 

“Tell him,” she whispers to herself, her own voice barely audible under the music on the car speakers and the rush of air and other city noise through the open windows. _Tell him_ , she thinks, like Harry said. Don’t think about the future – just spend the summer loving him, she thinks, or longer if she can. For the first time, it feels like she can do it. 

*

She gets to the Standard late on Tuesday, frazzled at red lights trying to fix her hair and text Zayn and Louis at the same time and get her shit together. They’re soundchecking when she walks in – she can see a Jamie and ginger with her name on it on top of Harry’s amp – and she only finds Liam and Louis at a table near the front because Louis reaches out and grabs her as she goes past.

“Hi,” he says, kissing her quick, holding her hand by the little finger. “This is fucking wicked.”

“Oh, god, thanks,” Niall says. “It’s something, that’s for sure. Hi, Liam! When’d you get home?”

“This afternoon,” Liam says, raising his glass. “Soph says to tell you hi.” 

“Aw, where’s she?”

“She’s got a summer class ‘til July,” Liam says, pouting. “And mind you, Niall, I’m dead on my feet, but I wouldn’t have missed this.” He raises his glass. “Got Red Bull and vodka in here.”

“You know Tuesday happens every week, Liam.” Niall grins. “You didn’t have to come out.” 

Louis waves her off. “Shut the fuck up, yes we did.”

Liam yawns pointedly, then winks at Niall. Louis punches him in the arm.

“Yes,” he repeats firmly, “we did. Now go be a rockstar, Nialler, your boys are staring daggers at us.” 

Niall looks up at the stage. Harry and Zayn’s version of staring daggers is fairly harmless and stoned-looking, but she should probably get to it anyway. 

“Cool.” She kisses Louis haphazardly on the corner of his mouth, feeling a flush in her cheeks from being all public about it out here on her own turf, not like at school. 

They do Haim and Taylor Swift and Lorde for Niall, Of Monsters and Men all together, OneRepublic, anything they can remember. Niall loves hearing the chatter die off in the bar as people turn to watch and listen, loves capturing the attention of the room and letting loose. She loves the way Louis forgets about his drink and stares, mouth slightly open, while Liam laughs at him and cheers for her with the kind of reckless abandon reserved for the very jetlagged. 

There’s always a sense of triumph after their set, when the stage area turns into the dance floor and she gets to sit down, flushed and sweating at her temples and being bought drinks by the kind of fans you earn for one night only in a dark, happy pub. 

Harry and Zayn pull up chairs to Liam and Louis’ table, and Niall sits in the middle, making introductions and laughing her head off watching them all try to figure each other out. 

“So,” Louis says, yelling over the bar noise a couple of rounds of shots later, “what’s this I hear about a bungalow?” He points at nothing, then swings his finger around the table until it settles on Harry. “ _Your_ bungalow,” he says, drunk and intent. 

“Yeah, I mean, it’s my stepdad’s, but yeah.” Harry says. “We can go this weekend, if you guys want. I’ve Friday and Monday off.”

“Me too,” Zayn says. “And my girlfriend’s in Spain at the moment, I’m gonna need something to do.” It makes Louis smirk, a little bro-moment between the two of them that Niall catches and adores.

“Where do you two work?” Liam asks.

“Bakery in Cheshire,” Harry says, over Zayn’s, “Coffeeshop in Bradford,” which he says with a certain resigned irony, as though he’s hoping he can get them to think he’s just making fun of himself and that he actually does something much cooler for a living than barista-ing. 

“Excellent,” Louis says. “So the way I see it, we can divide our time between music and drinking and breakfast. Covers all our skill sets. All you need in life, really, if you think about it.”

“And football,” Niall adds. 

“And football,” Louis confirms. “Obviously. D’you two play?”

“Not well,” Zayn says, smirking.

“Heyyy,” Harry starts, but Zayn gives him such a skeptical look that he apparently can’t think of a way to defend himself. Niall thinks it’s pretty amazing that Zayn can look fond and withering at the same time. He has a very expressive face, when he puts his mind to it. 

Louis is beaming at all of them, that slightly smug look he gets sometimes, like he knows full well he’s the luckiest guy in the room. He turns to Niall. 

“I like your friends,” he declares. She grins. He’s drunk, but she loves him anyway. 

“Good,” she says. He pecks her on the cheek and takes her hand under the table. Harry catches Niall’s eye, raising an eyebrow just a little, like, _so what’s your problem, then?_ She shakes her head the tiniest bit, smiling into her empty glass, listening to Liam change the subject. 

*

The bungalow really is tiny, smaller than Niall remembers, as though she was a little kid this time last summer and now she’s all grown up. She and Louis get there first on Friday, and Niall roots around for the key hidden in the shrubs by the front porch while Louis gapes at the towering trees, the glimpse of the sky above them and the lake between.

“Home sweet home,” she says finally, pushing the creaking door open. It’s dim and little stale inside, like any good vacation home on the first weekend of summer break. 

“Oh, it’s perfect,” he murmurs. They’re just in the common area, the worn couches in a circle, the little kitchen tucked behind a breakfast bar in one corner. The bathroom and bedrooms are clustered off the hall beyond that. “So you’ve come here a lot, then?” he asks.

“Yeah, I mean.” She walks around flicking on lights and opening shades. “I’ve known Haz since my mum and I moved to London. So we’ve all been coming here for years now.” 

“It’s adorable.”

She turns and smiles at him. “ _You’re_ adorable,” she replies. He winks and slips his hands around her waist, and they kiss like this is their house, like they’re the only two people in the world. 

Niall goes with the fantasy for half a second and it makes her heart hurt, makes her hold onto him after he’s done kissing her, her face against his shoulder. He sways against her a bit and she sways with him, their feet nudging together in an aimless pattern. 

After a moment, she realizes they’re slow dancing. Louis doesn’t say anything; even his breathing’s quiet, his palm flat against her back. She lets her arms rest around his shoulders, fingertips in his hair where it’s getting long at the nape of his neck. They rock back and forth to an imaginary love song. 

The crunch of gravel under tires in the driveway startles Niall a little, and she inhales and disentangles herself. She meets Louis’ eyes, and he smiles at her, biting his lip.

“How’d I get so lucky,” he murmurs, so quiet she almost can’t hear it. It makes her breath catch, and she stands there with her eyes fixed on him, unable to make the next words come.

“Get a room,” Harry announces, ruining the moment as soon as he walks in the door.

“We’re not doing anything,” Niall protests.

“But you just were, I can tell,” he says, pointing at the two of them with their pink cheeks. Louis laughs, and Niall shrugs. She can’t keep secrets from Harry Styles. 

*

They get drunk and make spaghetti and play cards that night, Niall and the four boys, and then they fall asleep on all the mattresses on the living room floor. It’s what Niall’s used to doing when she comes here – too tired to argue over bedrooms but awake enough to take the beds all apart. It feels different to have the five of them together doing it, though. It’s special in some small, intangible way. 

Zayn keeps Louis and Liam up, murmuring about comic books on the back deck for hours while Harry snores gently on the other side of the room. Niall drifts in and out of consciousness, listening to the sounds of lads bonding in low voices through the open windows. 

She’s most of the way asleep when the shifting of her duvet drifts into her brain.

It’s Louis, of course, wriggling in beside her on the twin mattress. “Hey,” she whispers, cracking an eye open.

“Hey,” he says. “Go back to sleep.” He shifts an arm beneath her, lets her curl close up against him. His chest rises and falls under her cheek, and his t-shirt smells like Harry’s bungalow blankets and Zayn’s cigarettes and Liam’s cologne, because it’s Liam’s shirt he’s stolen, she’s pretty sure. Something about all that put together makes her feel safer than she thinks she ever has.

He kisses the top of her head after a while, breathing in. She pretends she’s already all the way asleep, and soon enough it becomes true.

*

Louis is gone when she wakes up in the clear, thin light of early morning, cool air filtering in through the open windows. Liam, Harry and Zayn are still asleep on the other mattresses, limbs scattered every which way. Harry’s hectic bedhead pokes out from under his comforter. 

Niall gets a glass of water and shuffles to the back door. Louis is out there, facing the lake. It’s at the bottom of the hill just beyond the treeline, and there’s a porch swing hanging from a branch there overlooking it. He’s swinging gently, legs crossed at his bare ankles, his feet skimming the pine needles on the ground. 

She watches him from the house for a moment before slipping into sandals and padding out. He looks around as she sits down. 

“Hiya, Niall,” he says.

“Morning,” she says, sighing. “You’re up early.”

“I was gonna come go back to sleep sooner or later,” he says. He accepts some of her water and draws his knees up to his chest after he hands the cup back, making the swing wobble beneath them. 

They look out at the lake for a while. The silence is easy, filled with early summer white noise – morning birds, the stirring of the water and the breeze in the trees. 

“Hey, so,” he says, “I need to tell you something.”

She thinks it’s a testament to how far she’s come with this that it only makes her stomach flip a little. “Okay,” she says. “Something good, I hope.” 

He looks at her, smiling an odd, nervous smile, and takes a breath and lets it out. “It’s good,” he says, “I mean – yeah.”

Then he doesn’t say anything for another moment, until she nudges his knee with her own, prompting, braver than she feels. 

“Don’t leave me hanging,” she murmurs.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m – Niall, I’m in love with you.” He says it quick, and everything stops. 

“Oh,” she hears herself say.

“It just seemed like I should tell you.” He’s smiling now. “And this seemed like the place. Or – a good place. Seeing as I think it all the time, I mean – I really do, Nialler. I love you.” He looks down at her fingers curled around the worn green paint of the wooden swing, and covers her hand with his own. 

It’s only when he mumbles, “Alright, your turn,” that she realizes she hasn’t spoken.

“Oh, Louis,” she says in a rush, “I’m so in love with you,” and then she laughs, and it’s like letting out a breath after holding it for months, like nothing’ll ever be such a relief as hearing it said and getting to say it back. “Of course I am, I mean, I was gonna tell you, too. Jesus, Louis.” It’s amazing how easy it is, after everything, how it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

He breaks out grinning. “Jesus, Niall,” he repeats, and he kisses her while the sun rises above the lake, while the world wakes up, while all they need to know is that they’ve got each other. 

“So now what?” he asks into her neck after a while. 

“Now we sit here for a bit,” she says, “and then we go start on breakfast and wake the lads up, and then we do whatever we want to, ‘cause we’re on vacation, and -- and I love you.”

“Beautiful.”

They swing for a moment, cuddled close. “And… now we know,” she murmurs. She hears him scoff a little, fond.

“We already knew,” he says. He’s right, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to be able to say it all out loud.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @ [1dgaf](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com/). :)


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